33. Living by the Creek | Liu Zongyuan

第一句说被官职拖累久了，第二句说幸好被贬到南方。「幸」用得反常，可也不全是反话：他来永州之前，在朝中过的日子确实不好过，被贬反倒让他从那些事里脱了身。后面四联写耕田、撑船、唱歌，都是这个「幸」字的证据。柳宗元没有解释这个字，读到末句才明白他说的「幸」有一半是真心的。

The first line says office has burdened him a long time; the second says he is lucky to have been banished south. The word is odd, yet not entirely ironic: his years at court before Yongzhou had genuinely been bad, and exile did take him out of them. Four couplets of ploughing, punting and singing are the evidence for it. Liu Zongyuan does not explain the word; only at the end does the reader see that half of the luck was meant.

第二联说自己挨着农家住下，偶尔像个山林隐士。「偶似」两个字不肯用「是」，因为隐士是自己选的山林，他是被送到南方的。这一个字的分寸，决定了整首诗不是陶渊明式的田园，而是一个贬官在照着隐士的样子过日子。他做的活是真的，身份是假的，两者在这四句里一直并着。

The second couplet has him settled beside farm neighbours, now and then like a man of the hills. The word for "seem" refuses to say "am", because a hermit chooses his hills and he was sent south. The measure of that one character decides that this is not a Tao Yuanming idyll but an exiled official living in the shape of a hermit's life. The work is real, the identity is borrowed, and the two stay side by side through all four lines.

末句的「长歌」在整首诗里是唯一一次出声。前面写翻草、写撑船，都是有响动但没人听的动作；「不逢人」交代了周围没有人，紧接一句放声歌唱，因果就摆在字面上。收在「楚天碧」上，唱完抬头，眼里是一片天，没有写心情，也没有写唱的是什么。全诗到这里停住，日子还长着。

The singing is the only sound the speaker makes in the whole poem. Ploughing grass and punting a boat are noisy actions with no one to hear them, and the phrase about meeting no one has just said the surroundings are empty, so the loud song follows on the page as cause and effect. It closes on a blue southern sky: he finishes singing and looks up at it. No mood is described and no words of the song are given. The poem stops there, and the days go on.